Share This Story On...

NHL Players’ Association members voted this week to give the
union’s executive board the power to file a “disclaimer of interest” until Jan.
2, The Canadian Press said Friday.

The news agency, citing an unidentified source, said the vote
drew more than the two-thirds of the required support. The union declined
comment, calling this an internal matter.

If the executive board files the disclaimer, the union would
dissolve and become a trade association. That would allow players to file
antitrust lawsuits against the NHL.

Negotiations between the league and union have been at a
standstill since talks ended Dec. 6. No bargaining is scheduled, and time is
running short to save the season. All games through Jan. 14 have been canceled,
more than half the season. The New Year’s Day Winter Classic and All-Star game
already are victims of the lockout.

A new labor agreement would need to be in place by about that
time to salvage a 48-game schedule, the minimum in Commissioner Gary Bettman’s
opinion for the season to proceed.

The NHL is already the only North American professional sports
league to cancel a season because of a labor dispute, losing the 2004-05
campaign to a lockout.

The NHLPA now appears set to follow the lead set by NFL and NBA
players. Both dissolved their unions during lockouts last year.

The legality of the lockout is already set to be tried in U.S.
federal court after the NHL filed a class-action lawsuit last week against the
NHLPA. The NHL also submitted an unfair labor practice charge with the National
Labor Relations Board.

The NBA’s labor dispute ended less than two weeks after the union
was disbanded. Jeffrey Kessler, the lead negotiator for the National Basketball
Players Association in that dispute, contends the NHLPA would be wise to go
ahead with the “disclaimer of interest.”

“I think this is much more likely to lead to a settlement
sooner,” Kessler told the CP last week. “The players have concluded that they
are on the verge of possibly deciding that it is better not to be a union and
using the antitrust laws to attack the lockout, which all fans should be happy
with because it’ll work.”

The league’s Board of Governors discussed the possibility of a
“disclaimer of interest” on Dec. 5 and Bettman said the NHL didn’t see it as a
significant threat.

“We don’t view it in the same way in terms of its impact as
apparently the union may,” Bettman said.